Kean Nakamura-Berta, a Williams F1 Driver Academy member, will race for Trident in FIA Formula 3 in 2027. Photo: FIA Formula 3 / Trident Motorsport.
Formula 3’s 2026 season was five days old in the history books when Trident put out the first driver announcement of next year’s silly season. That’s fast, even by junior single-seater standards, and the reason isn’t hard to find: the Italian squad needed to replace the driver who came within one bad qualifying session of winning the title.
Trident has signed Kean Nakamura-Berta, a member of the Williams F1 Driver Academy, to race in FIA Formula 3 in 2027. He’s the first driver on next year’s grid to have a seat confirmed anywhere, and he’s stepping into the space vacated by Freddie Slater, who is graduating to FIA Formula 2 with Invicta Racing after a rookie season that ended one point shy of perfect.
Slater’s title loss is worth dwelling on, because it explains exactly why Trident moved this fast. He arrived at the Madrid finale with a 15-point cushion over Campos Racing’s Ugo Ugochukwu, then qualified 17th and eighth across the weekend’s two sessions while his car fought an issue, on a circuit where overtaking is brutally difficult. Ugochukwu made the most of it, and the two were level going into Sunday’s final feature race before a seventh-place finish handed the American the crown. Slater’s own take afterward was blunt: the team had “been incredible all year” and still lost the title to bad timing rather than bad pace.
That near miss is the backdrop for the Nakamura-Berta signing. Trident finished second in the 2026 teams’ championship, 117 points behind Campos, built largely on Slater’s rookie form: one win, three poles and eight podiums. Replacing that kind of pace is a real problem, and the driver Trident found to do it has a resume that reads like someone who was never going to be short of offers: titles in both the Italian F4 Championship and its Euro4 companion series in 2025, a Formula Regional Middle East Trophy earlier this year, and third in the Formula Regional European Championship, all before he has turned a competitive lap in an FIA Formula 3 car.
That last jump matters more than it might look. Formula Regional machinery runs less downforce and a cheaper cost base than the Dallara chassis and Pirelli tires used one rung up, and FIA Formula 3’s own testing days are tightly rationed under its cost-control rules. Locking in a driver in September rather than over the winter buys Nakamura-Berta a full off-season of simulator and preparation time instead of arriving mid-way through a compressed pre-season program – a real advantage in a series where 30 cars are separated by a spec chassis, engine and tire, and where driver adaptation does most of the talking.
There’s a paddock-politics angle here too. Williams’ driver academy has spent this year building out its pipeline while the Formula 1 team itself has been unusually active shaping its own 2027 driver plans. Placing an academy prospect at a team that just missed a title, instead of somewhere quieter, points to a program that wants its drivers tested rather than protected – a similar bet other manufacturer-backed junior programs, like Red Bull’s, have been making with their own prospects.
What Trident hasn’t announced yet is the rest of its 2027 line-up. Noah Stromsted and Matteo De Palo’s plans remain unconfirmed, and the team will need at least one more name locked in before pre-season testing opens. For now, the takeaway is simpler: the team that came within a qualifying session of winning a Formula 3 title isn’t waiting for the off-season to start building its next shot at one.
About the Author
